Just a couple weeks after fracturing his collarbone in three places at Motegi, Dani Pedrosa will once again take to his Honda RC212V, as the Spanish rider has indicated he will take part in Friday’s FP1 in Australia. Taking the Malaysian GP off in order to heal his shoulder, Pedrosa may no longer be in the running for the MotoGP Championship, but he’s shown strong improvements on the Honda RC212V the past few races, a trend he’ll be keen to continue through the rest of the season as he fights for second place in the standings.

With a titanium plate holding Pedrosa’s shoulder together, the Repsol Honda crew isn’t putting a lot of pressure on Spaniard to compete at the front of the pack on Phillip Island’s technical track. However with Rossi only 47 points behind Pedrosa for the second spot in the MotoGP Championship standings, you can expect the Honda rider to fight for every point possible.

“It was hard to take the decision to not go to Malaysia, but after another week I feel it was the right thing to do because during these days my condition has improved quite a lot,” said Pedrosa. “So I’m looking forward to getting to Australia and finding out how I feel on the bike.”

“The championship is decided, but for us it’s still not over. The target now is to retain second place in the standings and continue working on the bike so that we arrive in good shape for the winter tests, when we will start working for next year,” finished the Spaniard.